Almost everyone is busy these days; jobs, girlfriends, wives, families and other adult responsibilities really get in the way of the full time training lifestyle!

But sometimes one’s life goes to ludicrous speed for a while and it becomes even harder to train, exercise and stay in shape. At that point it’s not so much about making fitness and martial arts progress, but rather trying to not lose what you already have.

In episode 42 of my podcast I share some of my best ideas for staying fit when you’re crazy busy and have very little time.

My podcast is called ‘The Strenuous Life’ and you can get it on different podcast providers including iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, or Stitcher. Give it a listen there, and if you enjoy it then please subscribe to the podcast itself!

Here’s that podcast audio:

You can also watch a detailed discussion of how to stay in half decent shape when you’ve got absolutely no time in the video below…

The goal is minimise the backsliding so that when you get back to your regular life that you’re not starting at too much of a deficit!

Within the hour I got a text from a purple belt friend of mine who wanted me to show him how to do this technique and start using it.

I said sure, but I also advocated caution…

I told him that it was going to take a LOT more time to incorporate this particular BJJ technique in to his game. Not because it was extraordinarily difficult, but because it didn’t fit his pre-existing game!

This concept of congruence of new techniques with your existing game is an important topic, and I discussed it in more detail on episode 42 of my podcast which you can listen to on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, or Stitcher. Give it a listen there, and if you enjoy it then please subscribe to the podcast itself!

You can also watch a detailed discussion of this topic in the video below…

He shares stories about growing up training with Rickson and Rolls, the importance of universal principles in Jiu-jitsu, pushing the tables aside to train with his brothers Roger, Rigan, Jean Jacques and John, competing in ADCC with a broken foot and more.

I hope you get as much out of this interview as I did! His love for the art and experience in the sport comes through at every second.

Some of the highlights include

01:07 – Carlos on growing up in Jiu-Jitsu family

05:52 – BJJ comes into the mainstream

08:41 – Training with Rolls Gracie

11:07 – Style of the Machado game

13:03 – The continuing evolution of Jiu Jitsu

17:54 – Who are the most athletic Jiu Jitsu practitioners?

20:44 – Who has the deepest BJJ technical knowledge?

27:41 – What he thinks about the introduction of new techniques into Jiu-Jitsu

It’s episode 115 of my podcast and you can listen to it below, or go iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, or Stitcher and subscribe to the podcast itself (a rating and a review is always super appreciated!

Some experts tell you that you should only stretch after a workout when your muscles are tired and your body warmed up. Static stretching before a workout, they insist, can actually lead to more injuries not less. And there is some evidence from the running world to prove this…

This is the exact opposite approach used in most traditional martial arts classes, where the instructor makes everyone stretch before a workout so that your muscles are loose.

Who’s right?

Well, it depends on the sport.

Are you going for a 5 km run, which probably won’t take you to the limits of your flexibility, or are you doing a sport like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu where getting completely pretzeled up against your will is just a normal part of the sport?

In combat sports it’s better to go to the limits of your range of motion under control and on your own terms in the warmup, before your opponent brings you to the edge of your flexibility suddenly in training or sparring.

But there’s a right and a wrong way to do it, and long, static stretches are probably NOT what you want to do right before class.

I go into this topic more in a video from second Youtube channel (Self Defense Tutorials) which I’ll embed below…

Or, if you prefer, you can also listen to the same information on my podcast called The Strenuous Life…

It’s episode 114 and you can listen to it below, or go iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, or Stitcher and subscribe to the podcast itself (a rating and a review is always super appreciated!

The other day I almost tore a partner’s ACL off the bone, which would have required him to have surgery and many months of rehabilitation.

What happened exactly?

I was more experienced and a bit bigger than my training partner that day and we were doing some no gi sparring.

Because of the experience discrepancy I was hyper-focusing on a couple of very specific positions, namely Ashi Garami and the 411.

(This is a form of Targeted Sparring which is a great tool to use when you’re going against less experienced training partners – by limiting myself to only a couple positions and one submission it makes the match more even and better training for both of us.)

So we’re rolling, carefully and respectfully. I’ve tapped my training partner out a few times with heel hooks, all applied in slow motion. He’s beginning to defend the leglocks more intelligently and I’m having to work a little harder to get them. Everything is going the way it’s supposed to.

Then it almost ended very badly…

I had the Ashi Garami firmly in place, and was just finishing the dig part of the heel hook (where you get your wrist under his heel). 99% of the time when I’m sparring that’s as far as I’ll go – no need to actually apply the heel hook. At that point my partner typically knows he’s caught and will tap out.

But this new training partner didn’t know when to quit. He tried to escape by spinning. And, to make matters worse, he spun the wrong way!

Spinning or rotating can be part of an effective heel hook defense, BUT NOT WHEN YOU GO IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!!

Instead of relieving the pressure, spinning into the dig amplifies the power of the submission exponentially!

If I had remained completely still his wrong-way-spin would have slammed his heel into my forearm. This would have been a highly dynamic, full force application of the heel hook which can tear all sorts of ligaments in the knee, the foot and the ankle.

Fortunately I saw what was about to happen and completely released my grips without a second to spare. The submission evaporated, he spun safely and ‘escaped.’

Then I sat him down and we had a good little chat about the dangers of spinning out of leglock if you don’t know which way to spin.

These two leglocks are dangerous because they are twisting submissions and can severely damage ligaments in the knee and foot. Furthermore, for most submissions the pain starts well before there is any damage to the joint.

With twisting leglocks, however, you often don’t feel much initial pain: as someone is applying it to you might not feel anything at all, then you might feel a bit of discomfort, and then BANG, you feel a lot of pain because something has popped or torn.

So how do you train these dangerous locks so that you can trust in their effectiveness? My answer has 4 parts:

1 – Learn and fight for the leglock positions, not the submissions

One of the beautiful things about the modern leglock game is that leg locking has, to a large degree, become a positional game rather than a sprint for the finish.

That means that you can spend an entire sparring session working on getting into specific positions and maintaining them against a training partner who is pretty much doing everything he can to get out of those positions and catch you in them.

There are about 12 major positions in leg locking. Some positions are easy to get to but not super-powerful to finish from, and others take more work to get into but are crazy powerful finishing platforms.

When applying 95% of leglocks you end up either facing your opponents head, or facing his feet. The mechanics of controlling your opponent in these two positions are relatively similar whether you are doing a ‘safe’ straight lock or a ‘dangerous’ twisting lock.

Kettlebells are a very popular tool for conditioning these days, with people doing all kinds of crazy exercises.

In episode 111 of The Strenuous Life Podcast I talk to kettlebell expert (and longtime BJJ practitioner) Jason C. Brown and get a ton of relevant and useful tips for the combat athlete!

From how to do the basic exercises, to program design, to carryover from exercises to BJJ techniques there’s quite a lot here. Plus we also riff on old-school jiu-jitsu techniques and why they still work.

You can listen to just episode 111 of The Strenuous Life Podcast with Jason C. Brown below, or go to the link for the show on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, or Stitcher and subscribe to the podcast itself!

Give it a listen and, as always, please share it with someone else if you think it’ll be useful for them!

I really enjoyed talking with kiteboarder and extreme athlete Jack Rieder (in part because I’m dying to try kiteboarding myself).

It’s episode 107 of The Strenuous Life Podcast with Stephan Kesting. You can listen to the audio below or subscribe to the podcast and then download the episode in iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, or Stitcher.

Even though Jack doesn’t do martial arts (yet!) he still exemplifies the strenuous life. I hope you’ll enjoy it! Here’s just a bit of what we talked about…

The best way to listen to this podcast is definitely to download a podcast player to your phone and subscribe to the podcast (details above) but if you want to listen to it right now you can just hit play on the player below:

In this episode of The Strenuous Life Podcast I sat down with Ken Johnson, retired Battalion Chief of Training, to talk shop. We covered,

Managing emergency scenes, Staying calm under pressure, Training for boxing and making sure that you’re always in shape, Recent breakthroughs in firefighting tactics, How to do your best in difficult situations, The critical importance of your team, The fun side of firefighting, Whether someone should become a firefighter or not, How to increase the chances of getting signed on, Plus we talked ironworking, boxing, and a lot more.

There’s a lot here for everyone, including non-firefighters, because many of the principles and ideas shared by Chief Johnson are universal.

Find out more about Chief Johnson on his Career Firefighter site where he helps aspiring firefighters get hired and do their best at their new jobs.

You can listen to this episode (number 102) on the player below but it’d be even better if you subscribed to my Strenuous Life Podcast which is available on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, or Stitcher because then you can check out the previous podcasts and not miss the future ones!

Let me know what you think about this interview on Twitter, Facebook or in the comments below, OK?

Hey, we’ve made it to episode 100 of the Strenuous Life Podcast!!! Thanks to everyone for downloading, rating, reviewing and sharing it – I really appreciate it!

If you don’t already have one then first go and download a podcast app for your iPhone or your android phone. Honestly, listening to podcasts has changed my life because it allows me to stimulate my brain while commuting, doing cardio, etc. The ability to turn downtime into learning time could be a gamechanger for you too!

You can listen to episode 100 on the player below but it’d be even better if you subscribed to my Strenuous Life Podcast which is available on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, or Stitcher.

For today’s episode I talk to BJJ black belt Sean McHugh. I’ve known him and trained with him for 16 years, so I was super-stoked to have him on the podcast. We covered a lot of important material including

How to train your training partners so that they can help you get better as fast as possible Strategies for optimal post workout recovery BJJ injury prevention and rehabilitation How the teaching of BJJ has evolved since the art was introduced to North America Beginner’s teaching progressions, and should you let people spar on the first day of class? The dark side of MMA, including concussions, addictions, and lack of options after leaving the sport How to continue training when life is kicking the crap out of you And much more…

You can listen to this episode (number 097) on the player below but it’d be even better if you subscribed to my Strenuous Life Podcast which is available on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, or Stitcher.

Daniele Bolelli is a martial artist, historian and the creator of the History on Fire podcast. But this time I managed to get him for a return visit to my own Strenuous Life Podcast (Click here for information about our first podcast together).

You can also listen to the podcast on Youtube in the video at the bottom of this post!

Here’s just a bit of what we covered…

The evidence for and against an ultra-violent human past vs a peaceful noble savage model of our hunter-gatherer past The rise of MMA in Asia.His process of researching and producing History on Fire, one of the leading history podcasts How to get rid of weight cutting in mixed martial arts competition Daniele’s proposed ‘Gladiators for World Peace’ program and how it’s going to get him the Nobel Peace Prize His return to Italy as a tourist Is it too soon to tell whether we’re moving towards a more peaceful future? Ötzi the iceman, Neanderthal DNA in our genomes, and a mass murder that occurred 430,000 years ago And much more!

In this episode of the Strenuous Life Podcast I go deep with 3 x Judo Olympian and BJJ black belt Travis Stevens.

We go DEEP into his training regimen, including

Why he does 5 or 6 workouts a day What the strength benchmarks are for effective judo Why mental fatigue is often just as much a limiting factor as physical fatigue How he uses his groundwork skills to force his opponents to make critical errors The critical importance of gripfighting The differences between his BJJ and Judo training And much more.

In this episode of the Strenuous Life Podcast I tried to answer as many questions as possible from my email newsletter readers

Whether BJJ gameplans really are for everyone (3:30), How to pace yourself against the young guys when you’re 52 years old (8:36), The best stretches for grappling flexibility (13:12), What are the best drills for developing a specific position (15:30), What’s my hypothetical plan for creating a BJJ world champion if I had a young clone of myself (18:41), When will the single leg X guard and modern leg lock formula instructionals be released as apps (28:28), What should your focus be if you’re training purely for self defense (29:35), Ranking physical attributes in order of importance for BJJ competition (32:22), Bodyweight fitness routines (38:00), Tips for dealing with knuckle and finger pain (40:50), What’s a good balance between weight training and BJJ for healthy joints (44:30), Is 5′ 9″ too small to do BJJ (50:10), Training around knee pain (52:05), Post training nutrition tips (55:35), Flexibility for older grapplers (57:05), Are you being rude to your partners when you want to go light because of injury concerns (59:25), How can you deal with getting promoted to blue belt but not thinking that you deserve it (1:03:54)? And more…

When you’re training hard, hitting a training plateau can be incredibly frustrating.

But first of all, let’s hit on an important distinction.

A training ‘slump’ and a training ‘plateau’ are two different things…

I go into detail about the differences between slumps and plateaus in this article here, but basically a slump is a relatively short-lived event, one to four weeks long, in which your skill level actually goes down. Usually it’s caused by a specific cause, for example illness, overtraining, or not enough sleep. Fix the underlying cause and your level starts to improve again.

But when you’re in a plateau you don’t get any worse. The problem is that, no matter how hard you try, you just don’t get any better either.

It’s one thing to suffer if you’re making progress towards a goal; at least there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Suffering without progress is much harder to deal with.

A plateau typically lasts much longer than a slump – often one to six months. It seems like it’s never going to end. And it’s doubly frustrating because during this time your training partners usually insist on continuing to make progress, which widens the gap and leaves you even further in the dust.

Everybody deals with plateaus if they only train long enough.

In the video below, which I shot right at the end of a frustrating cardio session, I talk about the three steps to break out of a training slump…

First, don’t freak out. Plateaus are a normal part of any long learning or training process.

Of course jiu-jitsu players hit slumps, but it happens in every endeavor.

Runners hit plateaus when their running times just stop improving. Academics hit plateaus when they just don’t have any new insights. Businesses hit plateaus when they just stop growing.

Plateau Buster 1 – Try to Identify the Underlying Cause of the Plateau

This isn’t always possible, but if you can figure out what’s causing your plateau then you can fix it.

For many people the underlying cause is training volume.

Maybe you’ve gotten as good as you can get training twice a week. Yes, every time you go to class you learn something new, but in between classes you also forget stuff. Maybe at twice a week the knowledge flows into your cup as fast as it drains from it, and that’s what’s causing » Continue Reading.